The Legend of Spyro: The Krystal Cure
by Hope Carter
Summary: Two generations after the fall of Malefor, a mysterious and merciless race has emerged from the deepest, darkest reaches of The Realms' underground tunnels. This story tells the lay of Crook, the first Wind Dragon in over one hundred years.
1. Epilogue: Mark of Malefor

**Epilogue: Mark of Malefor**  
All Spyro Characters © AcTiViSioN  
Aeros © RattleSnakeDefender on  
All other characters mentioned and prose © RabidPanda1313

In the years when Malefor was young, and a symbol of hope amongst his people, he was taken in by a dragon known as Aeros. During his youth, there were not just four elements. There were the commonly known elements, Fire, Ice, Electricity and Earth, but there were also many others. Amongst them being Wind, which was Aeros' element. Aeros was the Guardian of Wind, and was overseer of the construction of the airborne homes of the Dream Weavers and his own peoples, and the magic they produced.

Over the years Aeros taught Malefor how the spells worked on the many floating islands of the Dream Weavers, and during their many visits to the islands, Malefor also learned the magic craft of dreams. He was able to see into the dreams of sleeping dragons, and many other creatures as well.

As youth gave way to young adulthood, Malefor began exploring more and more power. Soon along with Fire, Ice, Electricity and Earth, he mastered Dream Weaving, Beast Making, and the art of Wind. He became obsessed with the notion that he had to be master of all elements, and even sought out help from the dragon pariahs who lived underground for their secrets. He disappeared for decades, and life went on without the purple dragon as they awaited his return.

But his homecoming was not a happy one. With him came the apes, who wished for nothing more than the destruction of dragon kind. They were ruthless, and helped Malefor thin the ranks of the dragons during their first attacks on small sub-clans living outside of Warfang City. And beside them, under them, churned a massive force of terrible creatures, creatures of darkness and of poison and terror that would snatch hundreds of dragons from their own caves and dens while they slept, dragging them underground, never to be seen again.

Aeros, who had raised Malefor like a son, was distraught and infuriated. He ordered a small number of the Wind dragons to escape, and the rest to go with him to try and win the war against Malefor. His determination to stop what he had started inspired the other dragons, and they too rallied up against Malefor. And to even the numbers, the Beast Keepers worked tirelessly to create a new breed of creature; ones that could help preserve the memory of the dragons and help turn the tide of war. But by the time the first group had matured, it was too late. Malefor massacred the Wind dragons himself, leaving Aeros for the last.

"Why?" Aeros demanded, a bloodied, wrecked shell of himself. Malefor had smiled at his former mentor, licking the old dragon's blood off his muzzle.

"Because I'm going to end this world." And with that, he killed Aeros in a blaze of Fury, and left the rest of the Wind Dragons to die out as he turned to the rest of dragon and Avalar kind in his quest to destroy all of them.

As the years went by, the Wind dragons in the floating islands waited out the war, following their deceased Guardian's orders. Eventually, days, then months, then years turned to decades, decades to centuries, and finally, a millennia passed. Some of the Wind dragons had remained on the islands to live in peace with the Dream Weavers, while others flew down to their homes, seeking revenge for their fallen kin. By the time Malefor was trapped in Convexity, only a handful of full blooded Wind dragons lived on land….

In a remote cave in Warfang, a descendant of the Air Guardian, Gusst, was dying. She was nearly as old as the war with Malefor, a silvery blue dragon descended from a Dream Weaver. Her last egg had been laid early, a purple egg, and that egg's hatchling had disappeared many years ago, having hatched almost two hundred years ago. Their last hope was gone, and in its place, a new black egg was all that remained. Gusst turned to Ignitus, who was watching her anxiously. She beckoned with a claw, and the Fire Guardian came close.

"You have served your kin well, noble Ignitus," she said. "May you live much longer than I have, and may you live to see this war ended."

"Thank you, Lady Gusst," Ignitus said, bowing his head with a new wrinkle etched in his brow. "Madam, I implore you to remain but a year longer. We have only six months until the new batch of eggs hatches. You're the only one who knows where to keep them safely hidden in the Temple from Malefor's Army."

"Aye," Gusst said, "I am. But you and your fellow Guardians must be just as crafty as I ever was...for the hidden rookery is destroyed."

"What?"

"I meant to tell you," Gusst sighed heavily. "But my mind wanders so. It is only now, moments from joining the Ancestors that I recall what must be said. Ignitus." She cupped his jaw in her gnarled paw, pushing his head up so their eyes met. "You must make sure my kind survive. There are more of us living on the last island of the Dream Weavers. Go to them when this war is ended. For it will end in your life time. Tell them they must return to the Realms, or else our kind will die out completely." She frowned deeply. "We are lucky Aeros told some of us to take refuge on those islands. Now I fear it has turned for the worse."

"I will, milady," Ignitus said solemnly.

"Keep the black egg, Ignitus," Gusst said, struggling for air now. She sagged in her nest, and all the feeling in her body slowly began to melt away. Steeling herself for another moment, she managed to gasp out, "If...Malefor discovers the egg...he will...take it...don't let them..."

"I will not, Lady Gusst," Ignitus said firmly, and she smiled vaguely at his tears.

"We will meet again," she whispered. "I am not truly dying. I am joining nature." She smiled, closing her eyes, and seeing clearly for the first time in many years. "I am...joining my mother...my family."

"May the Ancestors be with you," Ignitus said quietly.

"And...with you..." With a great breath, she let out the last of her life, and her heart stopped. It was not painful. It felt rather like falling into the deepest sleep she had ever had...and instantly waking up. She saw Ignitus sitting next to her body, his wings outstretched to hide her from the world, and smiled. Turning to her parents, she said, "There is one last thing I must do." They nodded, and she closed her eyes again, finding herself in the rookery. She found the egg she was looking for; a copper egg with a swirl of dark rust on its side. Touching her claws to it, she let out the last of her Wind magic, feeling it sink into the egg's protective outer shell, deeper, surrounding and being absorbed by the soon to hatch Earth dragon.

"Your great-grand daughter will help save us from the greatest evil we have ever known," Gusst's spirit said. The not yet born dragon inside the egg shifted slightly, and she smiled. "She will be a messenger. The greatest flier of her generation. An outcast and a princess. She will help light up the darkness." She paused and frowned for a moment, but her smile returned quickly. "But do not worry. Though the darkness will seek out to destroy all of your children's grand-children, she will not be touched by it.

"Brook Crooked-Blade will be safe from the darkest of magic. She will bear the mark of Malefor, and forever be touched by light."

%~_~_~_~%

_200 Years Later..._  
Three eggs were sitting, unguarded, in the middle of a small clearing. They had been for almost a year now. Though the skies above churned murderously with the strongest storm this season, they remained untouched, by both the elements and egg thieves. The egg in the middle was the brightest, a nearly white-green shade. On two sides facing in exactly opposite directions, there were three darker green zigzags. It was the smallest of the eggs. On one side was a golden egg, with brown wings marking the shell, wrapping around it in a guarding embrace. The other was green as well, but a duller, darker green, with an even darker bolt of lightning curving around the shell.

Over head, a bolt of lightning crawled across the sky faster than a millisecond. The explosion of thunder that followed not even a blink after shook the very earth, and the creatures of the forest flinched. Within their shells, the unborn dragons twitched. They would hatch, and soon.

Miles away, in a dark cave lit only by a small, crackling flame, a dragoness jerked to life. Her forward sweeping upper horns scraped the wall of her cave, the lower left one catching a stray piece of hide from her meal. The dark green creature stepped over her mate silently, her eyes wide and darting as she felt her way towards the mouth of the cave. Her heart thumped violently again, once, twice, three times. She only just managed to keep from flinging herself out of the cave and flying to the clearing, turning to scramble back to her sleeping mate. Reaching out, she shook his shoulder, pressing down on the dark steel-blue shoulder guard to make sure he felt it.

"Wattsun!" she hissed. She felt a hard flutter in her stomach and let out a strangled noise. She bent down and took one of the forward hanging frills on her mate's head in her teeth, nipping sharply at him. He jerked awake, and she pulled back before he clipped her with one of his horns. A bolt of lightning cut through the night sky, lighting up the cave as her mate's blue eyes blinked open and stared up at her.

"Mmm, what is it?" he asked, opening his wedge shaped jaws to let out a huge yawn.

"They're ready," she said. Wattsun's eyes popped open to their fullest, making the light scars on his face seem just that much bolder. "We have to go. That spell will wear off when the first one breaks through the shell."

"Gale, you're sure?" he asked her gently, getting up despite his quiet doubt. The two of them made their way to the entrance to the cave, unfolding their wings and watching at the storm for a moment. "You're absolutely sure?"

"They're coming," Gale nodded firmly, and took to the skies without another word.

%~_~_~_~%

_Somewhere, Deep Underground..._  
"Enos...Enos!"

"What is it?"

"The eggs are hatching."

"Hmph. What do I care about traitor's eggs hatching?"

"Two of them are _the eggs_, Enos. From Gusst's Final Prophecy."

"Ahhh. Well then."

"I'll wake the troops, then?"

"No, not yet. I can teach nothing to the green about Wind in the caves. Let them remain with their kind, until they're teenagers. That should give them enough time to gain wills of their own and power to back it up."

"Enos, won't that make breaking them that much harder?"

"Oh, yes. But breaking something without a strong spirit isn't nearly as much fun. I want them to take as long as possible. I want them to realize that because they were born, they will eventually be turned into monsters for it. And they'll never see the light of day."

"Yes, Enos."

"But keep an eye on them. Send up that new recruit and his prized Lizeed...Sheila. Yes. Send little Krauss and Sheila up to watch them. But first, send them to take a message to someone. I want at least one creature to know of my plans...and be completely unable to stop them."

%~_~_~_~%

_Sixty Years Later..._  
Music. Music was always drifting through the forest. The forest which, despite its beauty, despite its tranquility and it's safety, was the biggest pain in the ass. And the music makers were just as bad, if not more so.

Kreekin recognized that tune. It was the song played at the festivals for the beginning of Spring, written and designed by the Pans and Fauns to stir and arouse positive emotion, positive thoughts. _Positive_ bodily reactions. Hypnotic, heady, light and frivolous, it was true testament to all that the Faun and Pans were. He thumped his tail in quiet irritation, wishing the music wasn't sticking to his ear drums as it was. The last thing he needed was an insatiable distraction to keep him from doing his job.

Tonight was his first night on guard duty. It had been a year since the underground entrance had caved in, and in the last six months, smoke had been crawling out of the jagged cracks, the tiny crevices that were once a huge thirty foot long, fifty foot high archway. It had been designed by the ManWeerSmalls, the Moles, but they had long ago left behind their lives underground. Without them it was only a matter of time before the underground entrances and exits crumbled, but the acrid smoke...that was something new.

Quite a few leaps behind him, two creatures were frowning in disappointment. The Faun let out a disgruntled, feminine snort, wrinkling her dark brown nose in frustration.

"He's ignoring us," Pippa said. Crook shot her a look, shaking her head slightly.

"No reason to give up," she whispered. "And don't talk so loud. You know we'll catch all kinds of hell if someone hears us."

"Which is why I'm surprised you talked me into this," Pippa said. "You and I both know your brother will knock us silly if he catches us."

"Catches you," Crook corrected her with a cheeky grin. The light green dragoness preened for a second. "No one can out fly me. You, however, are stuck with those hooves."

"And this weight, which I'll use to slow you down when I grab you by the leg and pull you down if you run for it," Pippa hissed. She lifted her instrument to her lips again, shooting Crook a glare with narrowed brown eyes. "Now be quiet. I've got to concentrate. Tell me what it is we're doing this for again?"

"So my brother has to sit there and be incredibly uncomfortable for the next six hours and twelve minutes," Crook mumbled, "now play."

"You're lucky this only works on males," Pippa replied.

"You know it."

Not even one note had been uttered before something popped loudly from the side, nearly deafening. Crook saw Pippa's lute fly out of her hands, part of it burning with a dark blue fire. Alarm shot through her and she opened her wings to shield them both from the next shot, feeling it sting harshly against the leathery hide before jerking it sharply, sending the majority of the spell flying back to the caster. A shriek and she was on her feet, catching Pippa in one arm.

Churning through the forest to the lookout outcrop, she skidded to a halt in a second, gasping for breath and confused.

"Where's Kreekin?"

"There!" Pippa said, pointing down. They peered over the edge to see her brother in the middle of a skirmish. Crook didn't even bother counting them. She hauled Pippa up and tossed her onto her back, taking off only to drop down about twenty feet. She caught the edge of another outcrop and helped Pippa climb up to the small cave hidden by a small tree and some bushes.

"Stay here," Crook said firmly.

"Be careful," Pippa said, her voice shaking a bit. The dark toned Faun ducked into the darkest part of the cave, and Crook let the bushes and tree branch swing back into place. When she heard the 'all clear' whistle from her best friend, she pushed off of the side of the cliff, and spiraled down to the bottom of the ravine.

She landed, and not a second later she dodged when she heard something lumbering behind her. She swung around to see a giant monster raising one arm up, but not to pummel her with a fist. Where a wrist and then a palm and fingers would have been, there was a cluster of dark energy crystals, and Crook felt a shudder of terror ripple through her. They were incredibly powerful, shrieking with energy, and the giant was going to slash at her with them. Ducking and weaving round him, she wrapped the thicker part of her tail around one of its stubby legs, yanking hard. It fell with an abrupt thud, and she jumped over its length to land on its head squarely, smacking it back into the hard rock ground of the ravine's bottom.

"Help!" Kreekin shouted out. Crook charged forward, her wings open and catching the smaller ones, bowling them over as she rushed to her brother's aid.

He was pushing at what looked like a wingless, shore four armed dragon, it's head unadorned with horns or a frill, with a small little monster on its back. Huge middle claws on the little terror's back legs dug deep into the attacking monster's neck, and it shrilled and waved one small, two-clawed fist with fierce gusto. The smaller one's steed was equipped with even nastier back claws, and one of them was digging into the hide of the inside of Kreekin's back leg, ripping it open and gushing blood.

Catching it round the middle, Crook snapped her jaws around the smaller creature's throat, throttling it like a dog shaking a rat before tossing it. When she landed she slashed at the false-dragon's muzzle, chest and neck, goring it, feeling her claws catch and wrench out an eye as she let out a war cry that built and built until she was roaring incoherently. A weight on her back made her turn, and she found another smaller false-dragon on her back. Its claws dug into her hide and she shrieked like a banshee, twisting round to clamp her jaws down on the top of its skull, wrenching it off.

Around her the battle raged. Eventually she became aware of more dragons around her, and the fire of the local Fire dragon turned the air to smoldering around her from time to time. Her wounds began to add up at an alarming rate, but she didn't care as she defended her stunned brother.

"Crook, get out of here," Kreekin hissed. "You're going to get yourself killed!"

Ignoring him, Crook took on another wave of false-dragons, slashing and snapping, reserving her strength for a final attack if need be. For the moment, behaving more like a rabid animal was working, keeping the vicious, ruthless creatures back for minutes at a time as they tried to find a way around her, to get at her weak spots.

The battle went still for a moment when an explosive roar shook the earth. As one, both sides looked up, as six figures cut through the sky and dived down. A dragon the size of two of the giants landed on a whole group of the false-dragons, crushing them easily under his stone-copper weight. The battle began anew as the strange new creatures turned all their attention to the newcomer, especially the largest, a gigantic Earth dragon that wielded a force of magic to be reckoned with.

"Can you get up?" Crook gasped out. Only a few more of the smallest creatures and their steeds remained, pacing a good six leaps away from them, as if waiting. She heard her brother grunt and sidled back towards him, keeping her eyes on their adversaries. Eventually she felt his huge paw on her shoulder as he pulled himself up, and she leaned back against him when he found his footing.

"Let's get out of here," Kreekin insisted.

Crook nodded. She turned to look for the cave Pippa was hiding in when she heard a rustling of grass, and two more of the false-dragons were charging them. Their mounts nowhere to be seen, Crook whipped around to charge back, snarling. Rearing up, she swiped at one, but it feinted at the last second. She heard the minute grunt of another one beside her and caught its tail before it cracked over her eye, lifting it with little effort to slice at its stomach.

"CROOK!"

In less than a few seconds, it seemed that a hundred things happened. The air around Crook suddenly turned cold. Her head whipped around. There was a huge black fireball careening towards her. Thunder churned, rumbled and roared behind her. She heard the shrills of dying creatures and the crash of boulders. And abruptly, she felt an explosion of pain in the left side of her face. Throwing her head back, rearing up, she let out a guttural scream, as the pain shot through her face, eye, skull, through her blood stream, across her scales, into her flesh, muscle and bone, into something in her chest that went from warm to scalding in an instant. Nothing made sense. She wanted to kill something, she wanted Kreekin to die, and she wanted to kill all of these worthless dragons. She wanted Spyro, the one purple dragon, dying at her claws, wanted Cynder to see her do it, wanted all of dragon kind to die slow, painful deaths of starvation, thirst and loneliness. Blood, so much blood, and slivers of her flesh and bone melted off her face, and she blamed her clan, blamed her kin, blamed Pippa and all the Fauns, Pans, the Cheetahs.

And just as abruptly, all was black.

_Darkness...so much...too much...no, not enough...! What was holding us back? Dragons! Filthy bloody wastes of flesh and magic! Kill them all, they don't deserve to live. Only we may exist, only us, we whom they dubbed 'outcasts, defects, little wasted prits!_

A light faded in front of the dragoness's consciousness. Hissing, she cringed away from it, but it only build up, imploding like a Spark no longer under control. Snarling, whining, clawing the ground, with saliva and blood dripping from her red-coated face, she arched and thrashed her wings in a threat.

"Peace, young dragonelle," a hundred whispering, calm voices urged. "Peace. List, little green sprite. Peace now." But Crook could hardly do as they asked. She felt the sickly warm-and-cold spreading further down her neck, creeping towards her frantically beating heart. When she lifted a paw, aiming to claw at the gaping circular wound over her left eye, a much larger, white-and-silver paw shot out of the cloud of light, stopping her.

"Peace," its owner said, a noticeable lisp to his otherwise strong voice. It echoed with the hissing, lyrical whispers of the hundred voices before, but the huge dragon that suddenly materialized before her had the most presence.

Somewhere in the marrow of her very bones Crook recognized him as a Wind Dragon, despite having only heard one story in her life time about the extinct drakes. Like the legend said, he had long, thick mustachios that grew from his chin-_griff_, and wing-like spines, shoulder-guards, and leg spurs. His wingspan was enormous. The part of Crook's mind that still had some sense felt a little twinge of sympathy, knowing that during the dragon's living days, those wings had been a hassle.

"Y-you...Ances...tor?" she grated out, past the poison and the fear and the fury and the hatred.

"I am," the dragon said with a minute nod. His mustachios moved with a haunted grace, billowed by a breeze Crook neither felt nor heard. The dragon leaned down until their eyes were level, and Crook saw that his were blank, glowing fields of gold. "Young Brook, daughter of Gale and Wattsun," he said after a pause, lifting one large paw close to her forehead. He extended a fore claw and Crook leaned forward when she felt a cool light coming from him. "Listen closely, dragonelle. You will from this day forward be marked by Malefor's Malice. But do not worry. My people have been preparing for this a long time now. By the divine will of the All-Mother and the All-Father, I give you this resistance to all of the pariah's spells, and release you from her hold."

Crook gasped, coming to herself as the poison backtracked the way it had seemed to trickle, and she heard the hollow swoosh as if a dragon had taken in breath. But other than herself, no dragon was breathing. She lifted her paw to her face again, and felt the hot, wet curtain that still flowed down her face.

"It will heal," the Ancestor said, "but a scar will always remain. Brook. The Ancestors and I have a task for you. Do you wish to accept it?"

"That depends," Crook said, narrowing her eyes. "What is the task?" For the first time emotion flickered across the dragon's muzzle: bemusement.

"Wise," the dragon said, and his people echoed him, the deceased Wind Drakes and Dragonelles praising her, their mists swirling around her. "You were born without any power other than your vast wings, Brook Crooked-Blade. But over the next turning of the All-Mother, of the moon, you shall be given a gift no other dragon will be given." The dragon opened his wings to their fullest length, the silvery-white webbing catching the ethereal light and blinding Crook for a moment. "No other dragon yet exists that has the full power to control Wind. But by His and Her divine will, you are to be given this power. You, Brook, are the only one.

"Do you accept it?"

"Yes," Crook answered instantly, knowing that this was bigger than herself, bigger than her family, her clan. This was no hallucination. As she had known what he was in an instant, she also knew this was her destined path. Whatever remnants of Earth Magic was left in her blood left her as the poison and dark magic had, and Aeros the late Wind Guardian rumbled his approval.

"Then let your training begin, young dragonelle."

%~_~_~_~%

Higher than any living creature had ever traveled, beyond Convexity and Nirvana, beyond Apollo and Luna, there was a faltering and shuddering of breath that did not belong in empty space. The Star Crafter clutched at his chest with his hand, feeling raw energy charge through him. He only just managed to hold in the raw power of the small dwarf star he was creating, compelled to stop and turn towards the Realms, his favorite galaxies next to the world called 'Earth.'

His mind raced across the distance of two galaxies, and he witnessed a battle there. These were the banished creatures, those who had turned against his treasured dragons, goat-folk and feline-folk, his goats and his moles, murdering millions during a time when the Purple Dragon of Lore hadn't even started. They attacked the dragons in a ravine, where the moles had all come out from underground to seek friendship amongst others besides their own kind. But it wasn't the number of dragons being attacked that startled him. It was the one that was attacked, the mint-green she-dragon who fiercely protected one of her two twin brothers that nearly made his metaphorical heart stop.

It had been a few centuries since the well being of an individual dragon had caught his interest. But this time was far different, alarmingly so. As one of the Greater Gnacks flung a huge ball of black at her face, he felt his energy, every piece of him strewn out across the galaxies, flare with rage and desperate fear. Crook was her name. And this Gnack, this little demon, was trying to turn her into a husk, a hive-mind. His mind raced to finish the motions of the dwarf's creation, which would take many years. Years did not matter to him. They did not pass quickly, nor did they drag on. But for the first time in his one millennia of life, he could not finish quickly enough.

"You know we cannot become attached to them," his brother's mind said as his corporeal body rushed to join his mind. "None of them. We are above them. We may watch, but we may never interfere. Father would not-"

"Hold your tongue while speaking of Father's rules to me, brother," he snapped, cutting off the younger Star Crafter. He felt his brother's disdain and fury building, and ignored it. "I cannot ignore this. The very balance of this world depends on this dragon, and many others. But if one of them should fall, all of them would be doomed to something worse than Convexity."

"You take too much interest in the welfare of your dragons," his brother replied thoughtfully. "I wonder sometimes whether you're truly loyal to your own kind. Or if you would rather side with those little wyrms."

"They are a kindly sort," Luna said, her voice husky and dark with contentment. "Galaxis, you are so harsh on our Lord. Leave him to his business."

"Galaxis is right, Wife," Apollo said firmly. "Star Crafters may not dabble in the affairs of the mortals."

"**Silence**!" the Higher Star Crafter roared. He felt the stillness of the universes around him, the absolute quiet as for a moment, time stood still for all things, though they did not know. Cosmos cupped Realms in his hands and found the fallen dragoness again. He had stopped her not a moment too soon; the magic had already set in, staining her bright green sides with a black and purple sheen that was frozen halfway down her back and sides. "Aeros," he said. From the Well, the deceased Wind dragon stirred and awoke, the late Guardian's spirit rising at his call. "Warn her. I can only keep it this way for a moment."

"Yes, sire," Aeros said. He oversaw the relaying of message to Crook as he reversed the affect of the Gnack's spell. He was draining his own purging magic from her when he felt something that made him forget everything; in an instant, he realized it was pain. He shrieked, taking on his favored form to twist round and grapple with the wielder of the shadowed weapon. In the next instant he felt all of his born magic drain out of him; he was stuck in this form, and as the spell of the blade completed itself, he felt something else...the lack of air.

He was mortal.

"Go join your little pets, brother."


	2. Chapter One: Eclipse

All Spyro Characters © AcTiViSioN  
Kindle © RattleSnakeDefender on  
All other characters mentioned and prose © RabidPanda1313/Hope Carter

Author's Notes: Hey all! Hope here. I come to you bearing my newest project, a fanfiction about critters of the scaley persuasion. 8D This is rated Mature for future gore, some foul language, and hinted sexual themes. (The latter which will be featured in later chaptered, more heavy stuff.) So yeah. Hope you enjoy it, and if any of you know of any good Spyro the Dragon or The Legend of Spyro fanfictions, lemme know in either a private message or a review! 8D Reviews are much appreciated. :

-Hope

%~_~_~_~%

_Four Years Later..._

A shuffling, huffing mass dragged itself into the cave. One head, two raised up, as the oldest of the three siblings that made this cave their home drug herself to her nest. Golden rod, silver blade tipped wings dragged against the cave floor for a few moments before she tiredly folded them, her long swan's neck nearly parallel to the ground. Chartreuse eyes were only at half mast, blinking open slowly now and then, as if she couldn't decide if she was in the right place or not. Her slim, wedge-shaped muzzle stretched wide in a huge, truly exhausted yawn as she set one broad paw into the nest, followed by the next, until she was standing in it. Finally, last to pull itself into the nest, was her long, thick rope of a tail. Tipped with the characteristic 'Wattsun W,' and the crooked bolt of lightning that was her namesake, the dragon's tail curled around the raised edges of her nest.

"Long flight?" a quiet, deep voice asked. As Crook (born under the name Brook) sat down on her haunches, she nodded her head from where it hung between her wrists, her strange horns bobbing. "How is Warfang, then?"

"Same's ever," she mumbled. One, then both of her wings stretched open. The three extra wing fingers and membranes on the top wing finger twitched, stretching before the fully developed wing fingers and blades extended, a few seconds, then shuddered before she let them fall to her sides, limp. "Uhhgh, Ancestors...why does the Guardian's Temple have to be on the other side of that swamp? You'd think they would want to move to Warfang, but no." She snorted through slim nostrils and lifted her head, exposing the little throat flap that was flexing, extended and pressed against her chin, again and again, to show her irritation.

"What possessed you to extend the trip and go to the Temple?" her other sib said, his voice much quicker, lilting and song like. Uncharacteristic for an Earth Dragon, but then again, living in a clan full of Electricity Dragons, even Crook herself had the tendency to ramble like them. "Wait, don't tell me. Lover Boy sent his summons when he received word you'd be relaying messages for the clan?"

"Humph," Crook said, lifting her muzzle and shutting her eyes in a stubborn, stuck-up expression. "He thinks he has me wrapped around his claw, coming at his beck and call. But I only went to see Kindle and her new clutch." She peeped with one eye at her brothers, Kreekin, her Earth brother, and Shokk, her Lightning brother, whose mouths fell open in shock in perfect unison.

"Kindle had her eggs?" Shokk asked in delighted surprise.

"Right," Kreekin said. "Well this is certainly thrilling news, isn't it? Hopefully Kindle can help with the dwindling Fire population, and add a few more colors. Reds and coppers, the lot of them. How utterly boring!"

"Better than being the color of a grass hopper, or a canary," Shokk said with a grin, exposing his teeth. Kreekin frowned at him, thumping his tail in irritation.

"Anyway," Kreekin said, shooting his cyan eyes towards the ceiling of the cave, "what did the dark avenger have to say?"

"Something very predictable," Crook said, having curled into her nest while her brothers had been chattering. She was lying much like a cat would, with her forepaws tucked under her chest and her hind legs tucked to the side, tail curled around her muzzle and round back to touch her shoulder. "'You cannot keep that egg out in the woods forever. It is no place to raise a hatchling, even though I myself was raised there by Spyro and Cynder themselves. You have no excuse, since you live with a bunch of peasant dragons. Come live with me and we will raise the egg, together, happily, as mates.'"

"And what did you say?"

"I didn't."

"Oh. So what did you do?"

"I laughed."

Her brothers roared with their own mirth, and Crook smiled, to hide her sadness. She was sure it had been quite a sight to behold. The Guardians gathered in the sitting hall, with Kyyroh imploring her to stay. One of the largest dragons since Malefor himself, Kyyroh towered over her, just about everybody, a huge black, red, silver and gold creature, the only pure Shadow dragon. Her lying between Kindle and Cynder, the Fire and Shadow guardians, respectively, listening with shock. Some might find it scandalous, that the child of Spyro, the purple dragon, and Cynder, formerly the terror of the skies, openly courting a 'peasant,' and a peasant marked by Malefor's black magic, no less.

But when Crook had denied him as her mate, the Guardians (the aging Volteer, Abominoss, Kindle, Cynder, Diesel) had not laughed. Their former attraction to one another hadn't been frowned upon by these dragons, encouraged in fact, but bad blood between Crook and Spyro himself had tainted their bond years ago. Topped with the fact that Kyyroh was going about asking her to be his mate the wrong way, and the best way for Kyyroh to learn was trial and error. When Spyro had arrived, Kyyroh had stood between herself and his own father, blatantly proclaiming her as his mate despite his father's disapproval for past digressions, and her lover had escorted her out. Kyyroh would no doubt show up soon, if not the next morning, then the afternoon following.

The fruit of their time together, a small, golden orange egg with green speckling its sides that was in the small clutch with the other Electricity clan's eggs, would hatch right where it was. Kyyroh had all but condemned their relationship when he'd demanded she Bond him after she showed him the egg. Though Crook knew her childhood friend had admired her for some time, and she him, she couldn't bring herself to Bond outside of the traditional way. So when Cynder had asked if they were truly mates, she had denied the fact in front of all the Guardians, probably invoking a storm that might end even their close friendship forever. To their credit, the Guardians hadn't said anything about their affair when Spyro had arrived, and Crook trusted they would keep silent until the time was right. But as long as Kyyroh insisted the egg was the reason that they should be mates, she knew he wouldn't be her's, and vice versa.

Quiet slumber was her's. She slept through the next day and a half, feeling her strength build up slowly, and spike now and then as her siblings brought her crystals and fragments of crystal to help her build up her reserves again. She dreamt of her life, in quick snatches, and had a brief, perturbing thought that she might be dying. Dragons often said their lives flashed before their eyes if they were on the brink of death.

Her childhood filled with laughter and brothers, visits from Cynder and Kyyroh, her uncle's Diesel, Malakyte and Wuste, their children. A romance with Kyy, tentative and hesitant at first, then quickly turning into a fireball of passionate words, tumbles in the grass, heated arguments about who loved who more. Of dancing and frivolous games with the Fauns and the Pans of the woods, Pippa her closest friend, who was half dragon and half Faun. Sibling rivalry, being trained to become a Messenger for Warfang. Games and growing up with her rookery, heart being broken when her dear friend Bollt had taken a great fall and never been able to wake up. And then, Kreekin's first night on guard duty. Watching the huge gorge, where the moles had come from, where one underground entrance had once been built, crumbled, and crumbled again, followed by mysterious smoke from deep within the earth. Trying to trick him with Pippa, only to be ambushed.

Suddenly she jerked awake as the dream replayed the magic that had cut a crescent into her face, over her left eye. The dragon, the one who had visited her in her wounded haze, and her message was just as permanent in her memory as her scar. Outside, it was dark. Blinking against fatigue, she looked around the cave, but her brothers weren't there. A snarl of thunder rolled softly through the cave, echoing back out. They were all probably trying to catch lightning, then. Crook stood up and stretched, pulling herself out of her nest. Her wings were still a bit sore, but that soreness was always a good thing. As her bowed neck arched in a stretch that pressed the bottom of her chin to one of the green, diamond shaped protective scales on her throat, another bolt of lightning split the sky, lighting it up.

"You must remember," she mumbled to herself, squinting as she watched the stray spark crawl and claw its way across the sky. Dragon sight was heightened enough so that she could see its path even when it was through its arc, and the glow fading against the storm darkened sky before it was gone completely. Much like the visit from the dragon, it seemed to last forever in her mind, but in reality, only a few milliseconds passed. She lifted a paw as if to touch the crescent shape on her face, but let it drop, shaking herself.

She padded out to the ledge that was both a landing and launching point outside the mouth of the cave, opening her wings to their fullest extent. The blades that grew naturally on the tips of her wing fingers scratched on either side of the cave's entrance, but she ignored it before taking one more step, crouching, and throwing herself onto open air. Almost instantly she felt the rain on her scales, drumming in a constant hum that sounded hollow on her ears against the backs of her wings as she soared and spiraled down to the Valley ground. By the time her flat, three toed paws hit the grass, it was slick with water and mud, and she balanced herself easily with her long swan's neck and doubly long, thicker tail.

Turning, she picked her way through the thicker sloughs of mud and little rivulets of water forced downhill by the down pour towards the nearest outcropping at the base of the cliff. She skirted it along the bottom, catching herself with a second nature of ease as she stumbled over the slick gravel patches and the water dampened earth below them, folding her wings tightly against her sides. She had been taught from a hatchling and up that the bladed claws tipping her wing fingers were not like those on her feet, closer to iron than anything else, and conductors of electricity. If one strayed too near the center of a lightning storm with their wings exposed, they risked being a target for the lightning bolts, and wild lightning, while a valuable power source, could easily kill a dragon.

The only one to have survived a wild bolt was her own father, Wattsun. But even he lived only half the life he used to, bound to an energy orb that absorbed most of the wild lightning's spark. It had taken from him his ability to control his own magic, vastly increasing the power of his born spark, but if his orb suffered even the slightest crack, the wild lightning would tear him apart from the inside out.

Some days Gale, Crook's mother, was not the only one glad she was not a full blooded Electricity Dragon.

Crook found herself on another side of the mountain's base in a few minutes. Around her the storm still raged, but here, it was just a trifle less powerful, guarded by the spells cast by the most powerful in the clan to keep the storms almost tame when they came close. It was also situated in a perfect place to watch the storm's biggest swell as it churned past, and here was another cave that had risen gently up a hill of the mountain's grass and turf covered roots. She could scent a few members of her clan, the younger ones mostly, and a few of the sitters. Gale was probably with Wattsun, supervising the collection of the wild lightning.

"Hello? Anyone in there?" Crook asked, more a formality than anything. There was some stirring inside, and a few shocked gasps as another bolt split the sky, and Crook snorted as she padded inside. "Oh, you silly things, it's just wild sparks. Calm down."

"Feh," a voice inside said, in a hissing pop of noise. Rryon emerged from a shadow in the cave, his gold eyes squinting at her with an unimpressed expression on his jagged, rough-hewn muzzle. "What took you so long? You were supposed to be back yesterday afternoon."

"And I was," Crook said breezily. She brushed past him, looking amongst the clan's hatchlings and young ones for a splash of blue. All around her were little ones the color of yellow finches, copper, even some steel colors. Rryon was all copper with violent bright lightning bolts criss-crossing his scales from the base of his skull and clawing down to his tail, the bolts the same color as the whole of the young dragon Crook's eyes caught on at last. Tanya was curled around her twin, her dark blue eyes darting to Crook and back to the mouth of the cave again. The hatchlings would rather pay attention to wild sparks than her, which was perfectly fine. She leaned down and nudged the bright blue shape tucked under a gray and fog colored wing with her muzzle.

"Wake up, little spark heap," she bade her young charge. A wedge shaped head with a frill that almost pointed forward, much like her own, lifted, and two dark sky colored eyes blinked open. Crook smiled fondly at Dart, who's muzzle cracked into a cheeky little grin of his own. "My business with those fuddy duddies in Warfang didn't have you too bored, did it?" she asked, both of him and his eldest sibling Rryon.

"You missed your uncle Wuste while you were gone," Rryon said in his strange tones. His voice reminded Crook of the hissing and crackling prelude of the lightning's roar, as if his own spark was just sitting at the back of his teeth, waiting to shoot out and explode. "Tanya, Kage, stop wrestling, your bickering makes my skull want to split. He had news of the brutes living in the deserts. Flickerr, tell your brothers and sister they can't sit that close to the cave mouth."

The huge dragon walked along side Crook as she and Dart made their way to the entrance themselves, all three of them stepping over the wrestling, snoozing and agape young dragons at their feet. Without having to look Crook would sometimes lift Dart over a pile he could not jump over himself, and he would dash ahead to nudge some of his rookery out of his sibling and his teacher's way.

"Where are you taking Dart, anyway?" Rryon asked when they made it to the cave's launching edge. Crook bent her head and Dart clambered onto her neck, sitting himself just above the frill on her back that was a mirror copy of the one on Gale's back. He folded his own wings, strangely made wings that bent forward, and then down at the elbow, connected to his sides by extra membrane. No other dragon in his family had these wings, but as one of the Blue Spark, it was not something the clan looked down at. Besides, Dart was the child of the clan's two leaders, Gygga and Sparkk. Crook turned to meet Rryon's polished gold stare again. "You know if you two get caught in the storm at that old field, there aren't any bolt caves. You'll have to make due in the forest."

"I'll take my chances then," Crook said. She unfolded her wings again, though this time the blades didn't scuff against the walls, which were further apart to accommodate multiple adult dragons coming and going. Behind her the young ones let out sounds of hushed awe, and Crook had to admit she must have been quite a sight, just as another bolt clawed across the sky again. Waiting until it had disappeared completely from sight, she launched herself out of the cave, pushing first with her forepaws, then leaping off with her back, thrashing her wings in huge mighty strokes that cut into the rain's constant rush in semi circles.

Soon she had her rhythm up, one stroke every two seconds that kept her aloft, but not too close to the underbelly of the storm as she passed through the shield. Soon she could hear nothing but the deafening howl of the wind, the thick rush of the sky opening up and letting all of its water down, and dully, the bellows of glee from her young charge now and then when a bolt would pierce the sky.

It was a hard storm. Their quarry would be put up for the night. But that made the game just that much more fun. With the lightning and its sudden bursts of light, the herdsmen wouldn't know what was a real shadow and a living nightmare coming to haunt them into sleep. By morning, if the storms let up, they would know it was something real that had taken from them, but they would be powerless to go back and save their little bleating things.

They soared over the various areas the clan often haunted. The favored watering pool, where many of the Southern Electric Clan would gather and slurp noisily, and chatter ceaselessly like birds, swapping stories and swimming. It would be overflowed in the next couple of days, and the clan would drink greedily, trying to absorb some stray sparks in the sky's rain water. And there was the shrine, made up of the iron and metal rich rock that the clan could spare, with its great energy orb crackling and humming, loud even in the storm's snarling and howling dirge.

Dart's arms tightened around her sides, clenching at her shoulders as they passed over the graves. The bones of their dead clans-brothers and -sisters were receiving a good wash now, their flesh and muscle long ago burned off when the spark became many, and burned from the inside out. Dart had been to only one burial, after the death of their elder Thoorbalt, a few years ago. Judging by how tightly he clung to her, he was still affected by it. It was not gruesome, or painful by any means, but it was something all Electric Dragons feared: their spark consuming them, ripping them apart from their chest and flowing out in a violent wave of uncontrolled arcs.

"Almost there," Crook bellowed over the storm, reaching up to place one of her huge paws on Dart's. The young dragon buried his face into her flesh, the small bony protrusions growing from his cheek bones digging in, but Crook didn't mind in the least. Her duty as his teacher and as his elder in the clan was to comfort him, no matter what the cost. Besides, being groomed to possibly become clan leader or even a Guardian was a big responsibility, and if the young dragon needed just the slightest reassurance, Crook was more than ready to give it to him.

At last they passed over the river that snaked its way to the pool, and Crook began her descent. When they touched down on the far side of the river, Crook crouched low, letting Dart slide off of her and stretch his wings. He opened his mouth in a huge yawn, and stretched his forelegs with his hind quarters up in the air, tail swishing with excitement. Crook sat down and lifted a paw to her hand, licking it clean of muck and grass. Her young charge watched her closely, picking at the grass with his forepaws in quiet impatience.

"You're just gonna get dirty again anyway," he said with an amused grin. Crook flexed her throat flap in a silent i_I know/i_, and he snickered before butting her with his horns. Unlike her own, they curved back from his skull, until a point when they pointed straight up, the backs almost perfectly flat. The tips dug into her hide and she shooed him away with her unclean forepaw, flinging mud across the bridge of his flat nose. "Augh, yuck!" the yearwing exclaimed. Crook let out a rumble of laughter, thumping the ground with her tail as Dart gave a quick, hard shake of his head, sending the muck flying. He glowered up at her impertinently, and Crook grinned at him. "Alright, so I don't like mud either. But it itches when it gets between your scales!"

"Try having scales as old as mine are," Crook huffed. "Eventually, little yearwing, your scales will stop falling out to grow new again. Your body will keep growing, and your scales, but they never come out." She sniffed the air for the musty scent of the flock. Even through the thick, stony scent of the rain, Crook eventually caught onto a sliver of their musk. "Stretch those wings," she advised her ward. He did as she walked forward quietly, head down as she squinted, trying to see through the thick curtain of rain that blocked all things from view. She wouldn't be able to see the fence until she was across the river. She lowered her head when she felt Dart's warmth near her foreleg, and the young dragon climbed on again, his fore legs, hind legs and tail squeezing her tight.

Quick as a eel-fish, Crook darted into the water, soundlessly so. Propelling herself with her long, muscular tail, she thrashed just under the surface, neck arched so that Dart's head and shoulders were above the water. Water-lid closed shut, she saw fresh water creatures flicker away from her in a helter skelter, pell-mell scramble of terror, but one of them wasn't quick enough. She snapped it in two in her mouth and let the rest float down with the strong water's current, swallowing with more grace than a heron. All the while she reached out and grasped onto the mossy rocks and strands of water weed, now and then digging her claws into the thick, firm mud of the river bed's steadily raising bank. Finally she lifted her head when all four paws dug into the bed's face, exhaling in a misty spray.

At last she could see the fence: rows of chopped wood stacked on top of each other around the river and forest's edge for almost an hours flight. Now a dull, dark brownish color, slick shined by the rain, it and a great smudge of green field was the only indication of where the sheep were.

On her neck, she heard Dart slurp at his chops, and his tail cinched a bit tighter around her neck. Chuckling, she hauled them both out of the water, closing the distance between herself and the fence to peek through the top two boards for the herd. It took her a good few minutes, and she found herself anxious for the taste of sheep flesh as well, muzzle twitching with a silent snarl. Finally her eyes caught on them, all huddled in the entrance to the wooden structure they sheltered in. She heard a lone bleating in the center of the field and frowned, turning towards the sound…

"A sacrifice?" she asked quietly. She began climbing over the fence, claw over claw, and climbed back down like a lizard, wings folded tightly at her sides. She kept herself low to the ground, not at hard feat since she was such a small statured dragon, as she belly-crawled towards the creature. As she drew nearer, she saw it was bound to the earth by a stake of wood and some rope, straining away from her with its brownish eyes bulging and rolling in fear. Her eyes snagged on the hind limb that it was holding over the round, tripping on it lamely, and she let out a disgusted sound. "The first sacrifice that human ever makes, and it's a lame one," she growled, and reached out with a paw. It wrapped easily around the sheep's neck, and with a quick, firm twist, she felt the upper vertebrae of the spine give easily. She dropped it to the ground and turned to glare towards the human's shelter. "What do you say, Dart? Take this one, or a few of the healthy ones, to show the human we won't take his culls?"

"I don't want any lame meat," Dart said, his tone sulky. Crook's muzzle turned up and twisted in a devious smile as she crouched low, her muzzle pointed to the hazy form of the sheep dwelling. She moved quickly, fluidly, like a banded-cat of the mountains would, stopping now and then to lift her head above the long grasses and listen past the roar of the wind, the hiss of the rain. Her tail lashed back and forth with excitement as she reached the first wall, sniffing curiously at the flimsy wooden planks that served as a door. Reaching out with dexterous claws, she plucked the metal bolts holding the latch out, swallowing two for herself and tossing up the fourth for Dart to swallow. "'Iron for strong horns, good blood…'"

"'And healthy scales,'" she finished for him, and old Dragon Proverb passed down the generations of Lightning Dragons. In order to have a good flow for their Spark, many Lightning Dragons had some form of metal in their bones, to conduct and balance the Spark's unpredictable Core. Crook ate the nails out of habit, as she did every night she went on a sheep raid. She plucked the latch off and left it in her usual spot, on a post nearer to the two-leg's home than the rest, and gently pulled at the door to the sheep dwelling until it swung open for her.

And there they were. Standing in the center of the building, bodies hunched up against the chill of the rains, expressions on their ugly, furry faces rather pinched. Crook opened and closed her frill with excitement and mischief, and snorted, shaking herself. She slunk the rest of the way into the barn, which was large enough to have once housed other smelly beasts, but now only protected a group of thirty some-odd sheep, rams and ewes and their lambs, young bucks and does who'd been weaned, ancient nag-sheep with milky eyes and sagging flesh, muscles too stringy from old age. All of them smelled like sheep shit, the shit stuck in the wool around their hind ends, and Crook closed her nostrils at the familiar smell, opening her lower jaw just so. Her tongue flicked out in quick, darting motions, and she scented her way round.

Finally she had picked her way up to the second level of the shelter, much like the roosts of the Gathering Caverns, deep within the mountain where a huge chamber and small alcoves where the Counsel or even the entire clan could sit during clan meetings or emergencies. The chopped wood creaked and groaned softly under her footsteps, but she timed them so that with each howl of the wind, there was a louder creaking all around their tiny, useless little sheep brains. Finally she stood above and across from the entrance to the shelter, and checked the air again, poking her head out of a cut out in the wood high above ground. No barking creatures were lurking about, with their sharp teeth, dull wits, and loud alarms. She rolled her head a bit to catch Dart's eye, and seeing as much mischief in his eyes, came up to the edge of the wood's outcropping.

And let loose with a roar that set every piece of the shelter trembling.

One of the older ewes simply toppled and died of fear. The rest of them scattered, crashing into the walls, the smaller mini-shelters within the shelters, odd bits of metal and other such things littering the shelter. Dart laughed aloud, the sound sweet and mercifully good on her ears. She laughed with him. And then, jumping well over every sheep that scattered and bolted under her, she reached the door, and shoved it open with a shoulder. Clawing up the side of the shelter, she shook it ferociously, and with bleats and drowned out 'meh-eehh-ehs' of fear, the herd sprinted out, instinct telling them to cluster together even in their blind terror. Crook calculated their path and tilted her head back, feeling the little magic rocks in her belly stir and crack against one another, sending concussions blasting out her nostrils before she a good sized Wind Bomb out of her teeth.

Amidst the wind there could be heard a great deal more wind, and dragon laughter, which is something like man's and also like a cat chittering its prey. There was a pounding of feet, the softer pounding of hooves tearing and slipping at muddy under turf…and then a bleat stopped halfway, accompanied by a short, quick SNAP!

The young ram had bolted when she'd swooped low at the herd each time, straying further and further from its safety. She killed it for its foolishness, easily bowling it over with a great sweep of her tail and then cracking it down to break its spine at the base of the neck. She snatched it up with one arm and turned sharply, finding a couple of lambs that had been tossed so hard in the twister, they'd died much as the old ewe in the shelter had. She plucked one up with her mouth and tossed it up to Dart, who caught it, and then took the other one, which she held in her own jaws.

As an after-thought, she plucked up the lame ram, too, carrying it with her free fore paw. She soared off in the direction of a bolt cave, one Rryon didn't know existed, because it hadn't been in existence until her's and Kyy's Open Mating Flight…..

It was still much the same. Crook stuck her head in first, sending out a warning growl to any creature that might've found the cave and taken it as their own. When nothing but the scurrying of little lizard-rat's claws answered her, she tasted the air again, but found nothing save an old, but slightly fresher than the last time, scent of night-shade…

_Kyyroh_, she thought quietly, closing her eyes. Turning round, she gestured with her horns and watched Dart trot in, head held high with his mouth full of lambs flesh. iI hope our egg hatches into a boy like little Dart, my Kyy./i She rubbed her side fully against the opposite side of the cave mouth where Kyy's scent was strongest, and felt a few scales flake off. _Please come back when you wish to feel one with me again. I know I cannot stay away from this place._

"Smells like Mister-Lord Kyyroh in here," Dart said as he started plucking great mouthfuls of wool and slivers of flesh off the lamb's side. Crook dropped the second lamb next to him and he wrapped his tail around it, and she chuckled as she sat down her own meal across from him and stretched out in her side, her head lifted to watch him and the cave's entrance. "Did you see him at Warfang?"

"No, but I did see him in the Temple," Crook said quietly. She idly picked off curls of sheep wool with her claws, not really focused on eating right now. The memory of their encounter there had her heart squeezing again. "He told me to tell you hello." That much was true. Like Crook, Kyyroh was fond of the strange yet loveable dragon child. Some of the Electricity Clan joked that they treated him like a son.

"Does he know about your Egg in the clutch?" Dart asked thickly, this time through a chunk of the sheep's thigh-flesh and muscle, and a bit of the baby fat. Crook nodded as she slipped the bell that had been on the sheep offering's neck from the silk tie, and started breaking it into smaller, manageable pieces. She divvied the pile in half and pushed one to him, and he fell on it as eagerly as he did the sheep babe. "What will you two name him?"

"'Him?'" Crook echoed, peering at her ward closely as she scooped the squares and odd bits of metal up with her tongue in one swipe. She swallowed them after a moment, savoring the rain bittered-taste before leaning down to sniff curiously at Dart's muzzle. "That lamb isn't making your head spin is it? What makes you so certain my egg will be a male?"

"Oh, I can just tell," Dart says. "Mother takes me to see the eggs now and then, so I can see my six new brothers' and sister's eggs. She says you can tell by how big the egg is, and how thick the shell it. Yours is real thick, and bumpy…a little scratchy, too. Like that rock you found from that fire-breathing mountain."

"The volcano," Crook corrected with a mumble. Dart's gabble faded in the background noise of him cracking bones and chewing flesh and the steady roaring hiss of the rain as Crook stared into the dark of one wall.

And she began to relive that first night, and what followed….

_"Brook Crooked-Tail, Daughter of the Earth and now Mother of the Wind, fly with me on this Open Flight, and our children will flourish with our souls." Kyy's voice, so strong and sweet, had set her heart to fluttering wildly in her chest. "Let us bring to this world our many young. And may they grow with the clan, Free Dragons with their own Line."_

_"Fly and sing with me then, Lord for this Month," Crook said. And they had launched off of the precipice, soaring easily on an updraft they'd discovered passed over the top of the small foot of mountain. Sky dancing had been one of their favorite games together, but this time, and each time for the next thirty rising and falls of the sun, their breath had come quicker and their bodies drew closer for other reasons. Crook had felt her stomach flutter when Kyy finally caught her up, first his tail winding around her's, then his long, thickly muscled body._

_They had kissed in the way dragons kiss, rubbing and twining their necks in passionate embrace after embrace, breathing heavily into one another's ears and maws as the two dragons had become one, held aloft by Kyy's huge wingspan as Crook summoned a Wind that would carry them for hours. And carry them it had._

_And then they had returned to Warfang, the Dragon City, and toured its streets and hidden alleys, watching with baited breath as Crook's stomach had swelled. But the days were bitter sweet at best. The two hadn't bickered often, but there was underlying tension whenever Crook was near Spyro, and she waited for her dark lover to speak his vows. But the words never came from Kyyroh._

"Crook? Will you sing me the lay of Kytheron again?"

Dart's voice broke her from her memories, and she smiled down at the red smeared, bright blue face peering up at her. He'd finished with his sheep young and was resting against her shoulder. To prompt her into speaking he nudged his left overs towards her, and she snatched them up into her jaws easily, swallowing them whole before lowering her head and wrapping some of her neck around the young dragon.

"You show a lot of interest in stories about Earth Draken, Dart," she remarked.

"Having pebbles for bones instead of metal sounds better than blowing up to pieces," Dart grumbled, snuggling in tight against her. Crook's heart contracted a little bit as she saw a flash of his feelings in her mind's eye: sadness.

Deciding it best not to nose her way into his heart where it was sore for now, she settled in and told him the story of the first Concussion Dragon, first listing the other known and oldest of the Earth Dragons. There was the Rock Children, with no magic to speak of, who relied on sheer brute strength and the many different types of rocks growing form their scales and bones, and the Earth Movers, who could become part of the earth through their feet, absorbing it into a thick shield around their bodies. Kytheron, the first dragon in known history who was the child of an Earth Mover and a Wind Twister, one of the few types of Wind Dragons.

She told him how he learned to harness Nature itself, learning as an orphan that Earth was one with the elements of the soul. Training himself in the arts of both Earth and Wind, combining and interlocking them like so many layers of scale, until they became one. He climbed the ranks in Warfang during its creation, eventually becoming the first Concussion Dragon Earth Guardian. His Fury was one very few Earth Draken learned to master. His descendant, the mighty Terrador, was the first in over two hundred years, and like his many-times-great grand-Sire, had clawed his way through a thousand-score dragons vying for Guardianship. He emerged the victor, with many a scar and a knowledge of Nature and warriors alike that many thought was a divine gift from the Ancestors, maybe even The Creator.

As her tale reached its end, Crook noticed a wetness on her scales, and sniffed curiously at it, wondering if she had blood on herself. It was a salty scent...bitter and afraid. Blinking, she pulled her neck from round her charge, to find him weeping on her. Instinct took over and she nudged him between her forelegs and against her chest with her tail, and he clung to her as best as he could. For a long while the young dragon bawled and snuffled, claws digging into the more sensitive scales close to her upper heart, but she didn't mind in the least. She had been teaching him how to master his own wings and his strange Spark for ten years now, since his wings had uncased. To all intents and purposes, this young dragon was her son.

"Young dragon, my young Dart, what's wrong?" she whispered, bringing a paw to press him against her tighter. She felt the cool drape of his wings extending to become part of his tight hold on her, the upper wing spurs digging in like claws as well. "My little Sparking one, tell me, and I'll do what I can to make things right."

"N-no one can," he lamented, hiccuping words that wavered in his erratically changing emotions. "The An-Ancestors...they...!" He set into another series of wails, and Crook felt her heart twist viciously with despair for her charge. Such sadness! Such panic! Her own fear began to push at the back of her jaws, making her chin-_griff_ shudder and extend a few times. "Moth-Mother...I can't...I can't...h-he-help her!"

"Lady Sparkk?" Crook asked, and in her minds eye she saw her. With the same horns and colors as Dart, but long and slim like a hooded-lizard, and just as quick, in movement and in wit. Her Brood Mother's jewelry was all dark silver, with topaz jewels set in even amounts on her neck-cuff and wrist bracers. She had been a force in Crook's life since she was a hatchling, her wings nothing but slivers of tender flesh under the skin and scales on her back. Fear seized her in full now, clamping down on her wind pipe with ripping teeth. "What ails your mother, Dart?"

"A lump," Dart hiccuped. "O-on her stomach." He stirred, and Crook released him as he stepped back and sat on his haunches, gesturing with dextrous paws where an Electricity Dragon's Spark was usually located. Crook's throat-_griff_ snapped open and remained rigid. "It's grown so that she can hardly spit out a spark anymore. The healer says there's nothing we can do." His muzzle and eyes slowly puckered with distraught emotion, and Crook caught him up in her arms and neck again, shielding her front with her wings crossing to hide them from the world.

iLady Sparkk, dying of a growth,/I she thought with her own sadness mounting. Sparkk and Gale had been close friends the instant Gale had joined the Clan, when Crook and her brothers had been growing in Gale's belly. Crook had gained her name-sake, Brook Crooked-Tail, from Sparkk as a hatchling. Sparkk had been the first dragon Crook had told about her own pregnancy, and Sparkk had helped her tell Gale and Wattsun. A world without the kind-hearted, hazel eyed dragonelle seemed a world that held a lot less happiness. If her spark was unable to leave her, even once every two or three days, Sparkk would end up dying much like the Elder...but it would be so much worse if someone didn't end her life before that happened.

"I'm so sorry, Dart," Crook whispered to him, hugging him tight. "You know how dear your mother is to me. If I could make this right I would. What is the healer doing for her?"

"He says that," Dart coughed and snuffled thickly, "that herbs will help. He says some poisons kill lumps like that, in small doses, but we don't know if it grows on the island, or if Mother can handle it." He paused for a very long time, and after a while tried to cinch his tail around her as well. "She's going to die like Grand-Uncle Kagen did, isn't she?"

"I do not know, Dart," Crook said honestly. She nuzzled him tenderly, the way her mother had when she'd gotten tangled in a thorn patch, when she'd told her about Kyy's first proposal. "I don't know."

%~_~_~_~%

_Somewhere, Deep Underground..._

"Stupid little snuffling whelp." The Gnack Queen snarled and thrashed her whip of a tail, hearing a shriek as it snapped the neck of some creature lurking behind her. She cared not, gazing into her pool and watching the Wind Guardian and her charge finish their...'touching' heart-to-heart over sheep blood and tear stained cave floors. The Queen felt her misshapen jaws begin to drip with her saliva. She had never tasted sheep before, but she had heard from the greater Gnacks it was tender and delectable, and smelled it on the muzzles of the Lizeeds. She snarled at them and lashed out with her double-pointed claws, sending the ichorous waters splashing hither-and-thither. "I'll give him something to cry about. His mother shall be the first to turn!"

"What of He-Who-Knows-All-Magics, O Queen?" The Queen growled and swung her great head round, her many, thick cat-fish tendrils sweeping in a sickly manner, not graceful at all. She stalked past the speaker and heard the Gnook hobbling after her. "If He is not turned first, He shall know. And He shall seek us out." In the many crevices and roosts, the Gnacks, Gnooks, bats and rats, all the creatures over which she ruled started hissing and chittering nervously at the mere prospect. The Queen snarled again and back-handed a greater Gnack, who howled as his body was sent over the edge of the bridge and down, endlessly down, to the distant pool of inner sun-stuff that every world had.

"Very well, little terrified brainless things!" she shrieked, and her voice's echoed for hundreds of thousands of miles, to all her peoples, whose numbers she had lost count of a hundred years ago, when there had been a million or more of them. "Then I shall turn that One first! Let his body turn to crystal." Soft murmurs of approval, delight. "Let the shards of his body fall at my claws." More vigorously now. She caught the scent of signal fires burning. This was the first night of their attack on all Dragon Kind. When the Temple fell, their plan would be set fully into motion, and her subjects were eager for war, eager for dragons flesh. "Let all of them fall! And when it is down to Those Three, Those Purest Three, I shall have my Mate, and my Kingdom Above the Realms!"

When she arrived in Gnork's chambers, he was already dressed from helm to boot in his armor. She hissed her approval and looped round him a couple of times before they stepped forward to the great dragon statue that formed the central support for Gnork's many privy chambers. They touched it together, a misshapen dragon's paw and a taloned bear's, and it began to glow.

"Speak your Plague," the hissing voices of every Pariah, passed and present, uttered from the one crystal dragon's teal colored muzzle.

"May all Dragon Kind be turned to crystal for all Eternity," Gnork and Enos the Queen said in unison. A three hundred year old plan, finally put into motion. "Let Spyro fall. Let Cynder fall. Let they and their peoples know only suffering, as have we. And let their Ancestors and their God never take their souls into heaven, forever bound to the crystals."

A pulsing ripple of magic shot out from the base of the statue. And then another. It shook the very walls, the earth itself above. The last even jarred the Queen's bones, but she hardly noticed as she and Gnork laughed, positively howling with demented glee, before shrieking at the top of their lungs,

"THIS IS OUR PLAGUE! MAY SPYRO AND HIS DRAGONS ALL DIE THAT THE PARIAHS BE AVENGED!"

"Your Plague has taken root," the statue's many voices hissed. "In three-days time, all but They will be–"

"What's happening? ENOS! It's breaking!"

"NOOO! DAMN YOU, FINISH MY PLAGUE! THEY SHALL AL SUFFER! ALL OF THEM! SUFFER AS I HAVE!"

"Not all, Pariah," a voice said. A creature something like Gnork was suddenly in the room with them. All white it was, so bright that Enos hissed and shied away from it, or tried to. She was immobile before it, knowing that this was The Creator in her two-footed he-concubine's chamber. He stepped forward, and placed a four-fingered, one spurred fore paw on the Pariah Statue's heart. With the loud _swooosh_ of air being inhaled, the last ripple of magic came rushing back, and was absorbed by the statue. The Creator turned His All-Knowing, All-Seeing eyes on her, and she felt fear rattle her very Spark. "Yes. Fear Me you should, Enos, she who would have been Fire Guardian. I give My dragons three months. Three months before I end this planet, and bring it back anew. Three months to reach this statue, and turn your own plague against you. But it is not just The Three, Enos.

"A pack of them will hunt for you. And others still will aid them. The Chronicler. The Guardian of the Souls. And most fearsome to you all, a mighty First-Child of My own. Who came after My First Son, and this one is a part of Me, My Hand in these 'Realms' of My dragons. Tremble, My poor, dearest child, for you have brought a great wrath upon yourself. May your Ancestors be with you, and all of My children, in this dark time."

And then he was gone.

"Enos, what are we to do?"

Enos the Queen, who had never feared until The Creator Himself had made Himself known to her, and thus, to the Realms, was still for a very long time.

"Kill them all," she rasped.

And then she fled, to the deepest, darkest of shadows, and howled her fury for a very long time.

_%~_~_~_~%_

_One Day Later, Above Ground_...

"...ook. Brook!" Crook opened her eyes, finding herself staring into a pair of intense blue ones. Her head snapped up from one side of her nest, and when she gained herself, she realized her Sire and Dam were standing near her. Her father's stone, gold blade-tipped wings shifted as he sat back and smiled down at her, the jagged, irregular scars stretching and shifting with the expression. "You must've had quite a filling down at that bald ape's territory. Dart is hardly able to keep his head up."

"We've come to collect you for the meteor shower," Gale said, smiling as well, leaning against her mate's shoulder. Like most Draken, Wattsun had protective 'shields' on his shoulders, which resembled smaller wings made of tougher webbing and hide than the larger, true wings. One of them was pressed tight under Gale's embrace, but Wattsun didn't mind in the least. "And to ask you how your trip went. I'm sure you realize Kreekin couldn't keep that tongue of his from wagging two mornings ago, after your return. Everyone knows how you...how did he put it?"

"'Pulled the blade on Kyyroh's tail out of his own arse and set his brains to rights,'" Wattsun quoted. Despite what was true about the story, Crook laughed heartily with her father at his joke, while Gale shook her head and rolled her bright eyes in exasperation. Wattsun nibbled fondly at the dark brown horns growing in a forward and out sweep on Gale's head, his chest rumbling playfully. "Don't pretend like you didn't laugh, either."

"Your brother also said that Kyy demanded you bring the egg to The Temple," Gale said, ignoring Wattsun with a sly grin. "I certainly hope...you-know-who wasn't within ear shot. Else you'd have a couple of newer scars."

"Honestly, Mother, your fascination with me fighting Spyro claw-to-claw is just a scale's width from terrifying," Crook sniffed, as Wattsun's throat-and-chin _griff_ extended in barely hidden anger. When he spoke again, sparks flew from between his teeth, and Crook had to suck in most of the air in the cave to keep them from catching on the dry stuff of her nest.

"If she had any new scars from that monster, I'd kill the bastard," Wattsun said. His tail swept in a slow motion, and Crook felt her heart leap with alarm when she saw the sparks crawling across the balancing Orb set on his tail spur. Normally idle, the sparks were leaping and hissing now, and Gale looped one foreleg around Wattsun's powerful neck to distract him. "Oh. Sorry, my dears. You know how those memories get to me."

"Happily there's a distraction for all of us from the unpleasant business," Gale said, steering Wattsun towards the cave mouth. Crook let out all her air and it gushed out with a sigh, and almost swallowed her tongue when Gale looked over one shoulder and gave Crook a stern, meaningful stare. "Business that still needs to be ended, and well."

"Yes, Mother," Crook mumbled demurely, getting to her feet when her parents were at the launching precipice. They took off after telling her where they would roost to watch the shower, and she stood on the precipice for a while, staring out over the valley.

This had once been known as The Shattered Vale. It was still called that, it's nickname only for the first noticeable protective spell on the island. In all stories, appearances of a place always held some sort of meaning. iStormy on the outside, stormy on the inside./I This island did live up to its name, as if compensating for a lie that still lived some in the dying spell that made the island look from far off like a barren spit of land in the middle of the vast Silver Oceans.

Thus it was with Crook. She was a whirl of inner turmoil, and she was sure she looked it as she took off after her parents, out to a clearing close to The Ravine where games, duels, and other gatherings were held in happier times. But as Gale had said, there was a happy distraction. Meteor showers were said to be the souls of the Ancestors flying just close enough so they could breathe the air of their Descendants, and sometimes, speak or come amongst them for a short while.

Supposedly on the night when she had been Marked, there had been a meteor shower over the Temple.

Most of the clan was already spread out amongst the clearing. Some were perched high on some of the little hill-mountains, her parents amongst them, while the younger chased on open turf, with their parents or some sitters watching just close enough. Flirting was all around. After the eggs hatched, it would be Courting Season again, an event that took place over two years. Six months before the end of the second year, the Open Flight was held. Crook felt her sides contract with anticipation and reminiscence. Three years since she and Kyy had...

All around her as she landed close to a gaggle of young dragons, there were gasps, exclamations, even soft shrieks of delight, as the first streak of gold-white fire clawed across the dark sky. The Celestial Moons were both in their early ages, so the sky was dark enough so that almost every flying ball of flame could be seen. Crook settled down and opened her huge wings, and the young dragons huddled closer to her out of instinct. Though not a sitter born, Crook got on well with hatchlings and young, another advantage for a future Guardian.

"Quite something isn't it?" a familiar voice said behind her. His warmth reached her second, followed close by his huge body, twice the size of her own. Crook's eyes shut of their own accord as she felt the whisper of Kyyroh's wing membrane touching her own, his wings doubly shielding the young dragons. The blade-like spur on his chin was cool as it brushed her cheek, his voice intimate and warm. "I spoke harshly to you, beloved. I have come to ask your forgiveness."

"You have it," Crook said. She leaned back against his chest and he rumbled with pleasure. "Now shh. Let's just watch."

_If only I could just exist like this_, she thought bitterly. _If only he didn't have his father to worry about. If only I wasn't so strong willed, so flighty...so many ifs._

"That's a big one," a young dragon remarked. Crook opened her eyes, and stiffened, feeling her wing digits knock into Kyy's. The ball of fire looked about the size of her fist in the sky, it's flames bright enough to make her squint. She could have sworn she could hear it's distant roar, and-

The ground shook beneath them. Cries rang out from all around ("Earthquake!" "Grab the young!" "Beloved, where are you?" "The Ancestors take us!"), until all she could understand was the bellowed gibberish. But her mind was wholly focused on the hatchlings under her, which she shielded with body, tail and wings, pressing them hard to her so that if any trees or rocks from the surrounding mountains fell, they would fall on her.

But then it was too much. Panicked, she grabbed a winged young one, and held it aloft.

"It's a harsh way to learn, but learn now!" she said. "Flap your wings! The Ancestors are not displeased! Its an earth quake! Listen to the Ancestors, they will teach you." The young one began to flap, and she stepped away from the others that started up as well. Soon a small flock of them were hovering just high enough, away from the after shocks, and she grabbed up the ones whose wings were still cased. Kyy had taken some up as well, and around her as she launched herself up, hovering around the young in the air, she saw the clan taking up the others, elders being helped up by the strong.

"BROOK!" someone bellowed. Crook saw something from the corner of her eye, and reacted out of instinct. Shifting closer to the earth and tilting a little, she wrapped her tail around Dart's middle when he made one last bid to gain altitude, and failed, nearly falling into a new chasm that formed in the earth.

And then, it was over. They all of them remained aloft, for how long, she did not know. Healers and Protectors flew about, taking count, marking injuries. Only one had been injured, one of the Brood Mothers's tail was crushed near the tip from a rock, and none were dead. Almost the whole clan had been here, and those that weren't were in caves protected by magic, guarding the eggs.

Just as the last after-shock's echoes died somewhere in the vast distance, there was a loud, if very far off, sound. Somewhere deep in the forests near the Eastern tip of the island, which was uninhabited, simply because their numbers were not to that point. The distant glow of fire called to Crook, and she felt Kyy's gaze on her. Their eyes locked, and as they landed, helping the young that they both held and hovered near, they both made a decision.

"Corrick! Lyvia! I need you!" Gygga's voice shot out across the clearing like a thunder clap, and Crook hurried before her childhood sweet heart to her clan leader. "Good, Crook, we could use your Wind too. And Kyyroh, you can sneak close without any real harm. Can't you?"

"I can, Lord Gygga," Kyy said. The two resident Ice Dragons came up next to him, standing at attention.

"When you get there, I need you two to get that fire under control," Gygga said, his words snapping out of his mouth in quick fire bursts. He was all dark gold with a bright silver belly, and three frills growing from skull to tail-tip. He shook his many horned jaws, which were much like a crown. "Remember, aim at the base of the fire, not at the top. Get it at the heart. I'm sure Ogden will send Fioreh to help. Go, quickly, before it comes close to the Shrines."

"Yes, Lord Gygga," the four of them said in unison. And they shot up, Crook quickly taking the lead, Kyy flanking her closely.

She saw it first. A great new scar in the earth, a burning trench deep enough that, when the fire was put out, Kyy's head barely peeped over the edges when he stood in it. They each took turns standing in its depths at Fioreh's urging, tempering their claws against the still warm ash.

"Makes the metal harder," he'd remarked, stamping his feet and sending up small clouds of ash and dust. "Sharper. Unbreakable."

"Or," Corrick shouted as he flew over, grinning, "it'll melt the ore right out of you!"

Crook had followed along the cooling edge to the left of the trench when the last spark had burned out. It started just a few feet from the forests' edge, digging it's impossibly fast and burning path to the ocean. Where it had burned the sand, it had turned it to glass, and the water sloshed its way towards the forest in inching, creeping motions with every movement of the tide. Incredibly hard, after sharpening and hardening her claws in the ash, she only made shallow lines in the burned glass, and felt its heat under her paws when she'd touched it.

"Careful," Lyvia called from a ways off. "It's still hot! Wouldn't want you to burn your scales off!"

Crook mumbled to herself as she stared out to sea. It didn't make any sense. Whatever had made this trench was huge, had caused an earthquake when it landed...and it was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps it had dissolved when it touched the sea water. But that still made no sense. She was about to dive when she heard a shout of consternation from the Earth Clan's fire Draken.

"Who said you two could bring the hatchling!" he bellowed at the Ice Dragons. Crook turned round and gasped in shock when she saw Dart hovering halfway up the treeline's edge, and dashed past them. "Hey! Watch it, I'm telling these two what f-"

"He is not their hatchling, he is my charge, and I've nothing to do with him being here," she shouted back before launching herself skyward. When she reached him, Dart was cringing, wrapping his tail about his back paws and ducking his head as best he could. "Young dragon, your father would have my head if he knew you'd snuck off to come here," she growled at him. After a while she sighed through her nose, and turned to watch the others as the Ice Dragons laid out one more layer of ice on the trench to snuff out any dormant sparks. "I cannot blame you your curiosity. But what if it had been something dangerous? An unstable meteorite?"

"I was sick of Roxx fretting over me," Dart grumbled. "She thought I'd sprained something. So I flew off. Father knows where I am, I'm sure."

"It's a good thing Gygga is concerned about other matters," she said quietly.

"Where iis/I the meteor?" Crook's ward asked.

"Gone," Crook said after a moment. "Swallowed up by the ocean, no doubt very small now. Nothing but a-"

And that's when she caught it. The scent of a dragon, of fire and rock and...fur. Yes, fur. She'd seen dragons with fur before, but none that she knew from her clan or the Earth Clan had fur. Quick as a flash she turned mid air, and dove down, wings tucked. She opened them as she landed on a thick tree branch, using them to mask the sound of her landing.

Her eyes scanned the woods for anything. Movement. A scaled side muscling past. But there was nothing. She lowered her head, crouching for a moment, sniffing quietly. Yes, there was a dragon about...

Crook's brow furrowed in mid step as she realized something was off. She couldn't quite grasp it for a few moments, and then felt her heart stutter in a silent warning that the lack of sound around her was clearly not right. She lifted her head, ready to take to the skies...

And found herself nose-to-nose with a creature she'd never seen before.

His eyes were pure white where her's would have been yellow. She felt her jaw fall open and her wings go slack at her sides, shaken by the all-knowing intensity of the creature's gaze. Dark red eyebrows pulled down together, just an inch; a sign of confusion and aggression. His black nostrils flared, and she caught the scent of it's breath: thick, dark smoke, the surf and sand, and the tang of blood. She remained motionless for what felt like eons as the creature's eyes bored into hers, though it was only a few seconds.

It's large, horse ears twitched suddenly, and she heard it a millisecond later: Dart shouting for her, his voice drawing closer, rapidly. Crook didn't dare move and inch, frozen under the star-like stare. It leaned closer, until it's black-smudged muzzle was only inches apart from hers, and blinked, once. The yellow around it's irises had turned light blue when the lids popped back up, and then suddenly, it was gone. Dart came crashing through the branches at the moment she let out the breath she'd been holding.

"What was that thing...?"

%~_~_~_~%

_Deep Within the Forest..._

He moved, fast, fast, faster. The green thing hadn't been that quick. Quick to get down, but then, so had he, when that first pull tugged him awake. But it's feet had frozen upon touching the ground, scanning slowly, with eyes bright and cutting like...well, something.

Quiet. It was so quiet. No, no it wasn't...it was so iloud/I. Unbearably so. He stumbled and rolled, thrashing and coiling. His body was so long, so big, huge and brutish to his own mind. The only thing graceful about him were his red whiskers, but as they caught in thorns and bushes and such, they suddenly weren't. Clapping his front digits to his skull, he let out all his frustration, growling and moaning.

All the noise. So much! Deafening, so loud, so loud. Little feet scurrying, feathers beating in terror at the air, branches snapping, leaves and grass rustling, the soft crush and sometimes the squirt of toadstools. And the roar and sigh of the ocean, clamoring at his skull, his long ears that caught and held every single sound, still with him, killing him...

There was something wet on his face. Pulling his forelimbs back, he saw red on his black and shining paws, and yelled. Suddenly his skull hurt, very badly, and he reached up carefully, feeling a small pain on his ear. Another yell. Him again. What was cutting him? There were cuts all over his head, a criss-crossing short ones and two longer ones, near his jaws. He felt of his neck with the back of his digits and felt his own pulse on either side of his throat, realizing how close he had come to slicing his own life away.

Two of his smaller limbs on the ends of his forelimbs were tipped with small, retractable, silver things. Sharp things. And the shorter little-thing on the inside edge of either...what was it...hand, yes, was a much longer claw, so very very sharp.

Everything smelled. It was too dark, too light, his whole body ached, it was so heavy, and... He shrilled when his lower body, one long thing of muscle with no back limbs he realized, cramped and ached so hard, he nearly sliced himself in two. iFood! And water. Yes, clean water, clear stuff. That silvery womb was all salty./I He licked experimentally at a trickle of blood crawling down his muzzle, and spat. iSweet, too. Not bitter like this. Food and water./I

Instinct, something he didn't know he had, took over him. The toadstools he'd crushed were first to be devoured, and he lapped off the yellow ooze that had squirted on tree trunks, leaves, dirt, grass. And then he touched the tree with both hands, preparing to take a bite out of it...

And the tree spoke to him.

"Lord, if thou art perishing from hunger, I wouldst gladly fell myself for thee," it said, in a creaking voice, a wind-over-the-leaves voice. The one next to it spoke, too.

"Deer would suit thee better, Lord," it said, though it spoke with a slow growling. One of it's branches fell off, and a small brown thing darted from it's still shaking leaves. He caught it easily in his teeth, swallowing it, tail and fur and all. "Or bough-rat. Little hatchling-snatchers."

He twitched his ears and swung his tail in an arc.

"So much noise," he said in this way, the way the trees spoke, with movement and gestures of great, many limbs. "And I ache. What is this place?"

"Thou'rt in yon Southern Isle, of the mighty dragons, M'Lord," the softer tree said. "Thou didst fall from the sky, did thee not?"

"Did I?" he asked, twitching his whiskers.

"Aye," an older snarl said. He looked up, up and up and up, at a huge towering tree, as wide doubly as he was long. "Thou art not bairn of this Realm, Lord of the Stars."

"What speakest thou, Elder-Trunk?" the other snarling one asked.

"Our Highest Lord, The Creator, is this Lord's Father. He maketh the stars o'r our many boughs, and will for all time to come."

"You know me?" he asked.

"Aye," Elder-Trunk replied. "I have ken of ye since my seed first took root, Lord Cosmos. I am a Seer. I saw ye coming, I saw ye leaving us. Thou art Cosmos, High Lord of the Star Makers, Eldest of the Star Crafters. Father of Sagittarius, Taurus, Draco, and Pisces. Ye hold their power in your back, Sire, as ye please."

"What is my purpose here on this...Southern Isle, of yours?" Cosmos the Star Crafter said.

"Alas, M'Lord, that I ken not," Elder-Trunk said with a great sigh. "But ye must seek shelter, Lord Cosmos, and then return to your Throne in the Skies."

"Sustenance first, Elder-Trunk," the female tree sighed. "Lord Cosmos, there be a herd of deer but a stalk away." The wind rustled her leaves, and one of her main limbs pointed in the direction that she spoke of. Cosmos turned his muzzle that way, and felt his spine ripple with power. "Swift hunting to thee, Lord Cosmos. Speak to us when'er though doth need aid. We would help us, gladly."

"Aye," the males chorused.

"Why do you three call me 'Lord?'" he asked.

"We all do," the entire forest sighed with a great wind. Cosmos crouched low, shocked and afraid by so many voices. "Fear not! Fear not...fear not..."

"We are a great many, yes, M'Lord," Elder-Trunk said. "And all of us regard ye in the highest honor. Besides being a son of The Creator, thou art our former lords rebairn, the great tenders, the ones who harvested the first sapling and all his hundreds of children after him."

"Hallowed be his boughs," the forest chorused again.

"Now go," Elder-Trunk's daughter whispered. "Have your fill, and then some. Feed your mighty flame, and bring glory to your once-dead-peoples.

_Author's Notes:_

_Okay, so a few things need to be clarified._

_1. **Is Cosmos a god?** No, he is a purely mental entity with fully realized powers. Basically he is a super intelligent brain without physical essence, but not one without his weaknesses._

_2. **Where's Spyro in this? Isn't it inspired by The Legend of Spyro**? Spyro will show up later, I promise. In the first three chapters, though, (not including the prequel) Spyro doesn't play a major part, at least with a spoken role. He and Cynder both will play a major part of the story, but for the sake of keeping this mostly a surprise for you all, I'll keep the details to myself._

_3. **Isn't Kindle RattleSnakeDefender's?** Yes, she is. Kindle is one of the many cameos I'll be featuring. Here are a few comics and artists you can expect cameos from: The Guardians (Rattle's), Feuriah's Dawn (Weird), TLoS: Zonoya's Revenge (Shalone), Razzek, and many, many more. (If it seems like a bid for popularity, I assure you it isn't. I just like writing and I feel like the characters that I'll feature will be a challenge to me as I write about them.)_

_4. **What else can we expect in the future?** To name a few things: Nestor, the First Artisan from Spyro the Dragon. Sparx, Sparx's parents. Sheep. More sheep. Shepherds. More sheep. Butterflies. And uh...more sheep. Also, Elora will have a guest appearance. ;) Can't have Fauns and Satyrs without the gorgeous Elly herself!_

_Here are a few things that inspired this fanfiction/comic/illustrated series._

_My lifelong love for Spyro. Some of you may not know this, but Spyro was basically part of every other weekend of my life for a long, long time. I never got a chance to play Ripto's Rage, but Spyro the Dragon, and Spyro: A Hero's Tail were games I played at my grandparents' house for hours. About five or four years back I got the inspiration to write a fanfiction about Spyro rescuing the last surviving daughter of the King of the Dragons. This was set in both the original Spyro the Dragon universe and The Legend of Spyro universe. My love for all the species of dragons from Spyro the Dragon, and then the ingenuity for creating the elemental dragons in TLoSpyro spawned it. The 'princess' will also later appear in the fanfiction, comic, and illustrations...you've seen her before. ;)_

_The music from both Old and New Spyro. I can never decide which I like more, but each time I listen to either tracks, my imagination gets the better of me._

_Dragons period. It's so easy to create scaley creatures, but to create ones that are truly original in both design and personality takes a lot of devotion, and challenges my creative process._

_My hopeless romantic side. For some reason dragons have always struck me as very passionate creatures, not cold-hearted in the least, though their actions in literature and the like are sometimes merciless and bloody. Still, there's something about dragons that touches every society, every corner of the earth that is so intriguing. Call me a day-dreamer, but as a child (and sometimes in present day) I used to entertain thoughts of riding on a dragon's back, soaring high enough to dip my hands into clouds. (Even though I am absolutely terrified of heights...and falling...and the short, messy, broken-y stop that comes from falling from a very tall point.)_

_The Guardians themselves. Ignitus, Volteer, Cyril, and Terrador...what fascinating characters we didn't know enough about! While they weren't mentioned that much right now, I'm brain storming about my theories about them. I'll hopefully be able to explain some things that we never knew about: Where (or what) was The Shattered Vale? Are any of The Guardians related? Where did the holes in Terrador's wings come from? Who are Cyril's famed ancestors of Yore? ..._  
_And why did Volteer become slightly mute in Dawn of the Dragon?_


End file.
